Its main features are replay management and analysis for both individual replays and mass replays (multi-replay statistics). It provides easy but powerful and efficient replay management and basic statistics for starters, and advanced statistics and time development charts useful even for professional players.

so i'm sure that you've all run across the blog post by the guy who figured out how MMR works and how and when you get promoted between leagues and all that jazz. well, he made a google spreadsheet where you enter in your info (wins/losses/league/remaining bonus pool)and it will give you the number of games needed for promotion to the next league. however, like everything else with the SC2 "community", the spreadsheet is now a mess and can be a little confusing to use. so i took the time to recreate the spreadsheet for you ARS folks. seeing as how you are all supposed to systems admins and crap like that, i think that i can share this with you and trust you won't totally eff up my nice formatting. also, i've enjoyed reading about everyone's progress on the forum, so i figured it'd be cool to have something else to supplement this. there are some caveats about using the sheet that you can find in the actual document, but i'll post them here for posterity's sake.

1) This was stolen in its entirety from http://sc2mmr.blogspot.com. I make no claims on accuracy, reliability, or ability to stop 4gates. The original author says this is accurate about 80% of the time.2) For a full explanation, hit the link above. But basically, this gives you an estimate at a specific point in time. The closer you get to promotion, the less accurate the formula is. also, with every game you play, your winning percentage and available bonus pool will change, so the number of games needed for promotion will change with each game. also, the games needed for promotion assumes that you play those games with the same win rate as you currently have.3) For those of you with winning percentages under .500 this won't work since it effs up the math and logically, if you are losing the majority of your games it makes sense that you won't ever get promoted.4) There's some screwy offset for the magic number if you're in the masters league, so if you're in the masters league, just be happy that you're that good, because as far as this spreadsheet goes, you're SOL as far as figuring out when you become a grandmaster.5) Bronzers: The person who figured this out says that sometimes the magic number for Bronze league is sometimes 500 and sometimes is 1000. I used 500 because it works for me. If you get something weird in bronze, try changing the magic number to 1000.6) I don't know how well this works for anything other than 1v1. I would guess that the same formulas are used for the 2v2 or whatever, but I have no solid source for that.7) Part of the formula is the current total available bonus pool, which changes from day to day. There is a link on the spreadsheet that will get you this number from sc2ranks.com. As a good community member, feel free to update this when you have a second.

also, i've used my spreadsheet-fu to make it as usable as i can, but i'm by no means an expert (i.e. i tried to get the league column to be a dropdown menu, but then that effed up the magic number column), so if you're good with this stuff, feel free to improve. feel free to pass it on to other non ars sc2 people, but make sure they don't eff my ess up. it also needs more pictures of animals with captions. gl hf.

e: The ArsClan post was obsoleted but locked from editing because of the forum rules on that side, so could you please edit the dates in the quoted version in the OP? Just to avoid any confusion from the mismatch. Note that the Australian time should read "on the 19th", not the 18th, because we're on moon time.

e2: I haven't noticed any messages from AlphaMeridian or any of the rest of the mod/admin team, so unless I'm told otherwise I'll be personally putting up a $20 prize (or equivalent; Steam gift vouchers, possibly, if cash is an issue) prize for each of the tourney brackets. This is obviously not affiliated with ArsTechnica, Condé Nast or anyone else, it's just me being a fuckin' baller. :]

Now that the game is out and people have had time to play it, it makes more sense to start to plan for more regular tournaments. In beta, there was a lot of talk but it didn't *really* make all that much sense because it was in beta. I think the greatest hurdle for this one (and we're already seeing) is that people have a bunch of scheduling issues, so I'm hoping that enough people can play on that weekend. The previous tournament had some issues with more loose scheduling (i.e. the tournament ran for a month, and had rounds). The sweet spot may be somewhere in the middle.

Yeah, I'd love to see a monthly or semi-monthly tournament, maybe with rotating admins. I can't do December (and probably can't do January) but I definitely had a blast with the original ArsClan tournament and definitely want to play some more.

Now that the game is out and people have had time to play it, it makes more sense to start to plan for more regular tournaments. In beta, there was a lot of talk but it didn't *really* make all that much sense because it was in beta. I think the greatest hurdle for this one (and we're already seeing) is that people have a bunch of scheduling issues, so I'm hoping that enough people can play on that weekend. The previous tournament had some issues with more loose scheduling (i.e. the tournament ran for a month, and had rounds). The sweet spot may be somewhere in the middle.

A week seems reasonable for a smallish (<= 16) field. Preliminary rounds could be played Sunday-Friday at players' convenience, whittling the field down to four. That should make scheduling semis and finals simpler, whether it ends up on a weekend or not.

I was just re-watching the Fenix vs LiquidTyler game where fenix roasted 30 probes with 2 blueflame hellions. They keep talking about how brilliant it is by Fenix to attack with the banshee to sort of stampeed all the probes towards the hellions. I can't help but think it was mostly just luck. Fenix almost always tries to make his harassment come in pairs at different spots. It's smart play, because the opponent often only responds quickly to one of the threats, but I don't think he really could have known that tyler's probes would all stream down to the natural and clump up for the hellions to torch them.

Still it was a damn impressive sight. I found myself cringing and sitting forward in my seat.

Games 3&4 are the best matches I've ever seen. Both players are stupendously good, but Naama's creeping tanks + bunkers looks unstoppable. Also, the commentary was excellent throughout. Day9 and the other dude did a perfect play-by-play / color-man setup. Very professional.

Just played a few matches against DeerSteak, all ZvP. He improved markedly through each of the matches, until our last match ended up with a number of skirmishes and an epic final battle. Plenty of room to improve for both of us, and hopefully I helped him plug a few holes in his play. At the very least he now has a bunch of experience in holding off a 7 Roach rush with a quick Muta follow-up.

First match, 7RR takes him down early.

Second match, he holds off the 7RR quite well, but the Muta follow-up hits him when his guard is down and does unrecoverable damage to his economy.

Third match, he holds off the initial rush and the follow-up, and makes a few small attacks at my base, but I keep him from expanding while I get my third base up and end up winning through sheer force.

Epic match. He handily deals with the initial rush and does a ton of econ damage in his first push. After a number of skirmishes outside of my base, he makes his final push with his Stalkers into my 200 food Muta/Hydra/Ling army. I win that battle and counter with a 250 food push of my own, augmenting my forces with Ultralisks.

Games 3&4 are the best matches I've ever seen. Both players are stupendously good, but Naama's creeping tanks + bunkers looks unstoppable. Also, the commentary was excellent throughout. Day9 and the other dude did a perfect play-by-play / color-man setup. Very professional.

I couldn't understand the lack of a mid-game Ghost, since an EMP would have fucked that shit up. I guess they were just that short on resources?

Epic match. He handily deals with the initial rush and does a ton of econ damage in his first push. After a number of skirmishes outside of my base, he makes his final push with his Stalkers into my 200 food Muta/Hydra/Ling army. I win that battle and counter with a 250 food push of my own, augmenting my forces with Ultralisks.

I knew you had alot of mutas and hydras, but you were maxed? Oh, I still have a long ways to go. :lol:

Epic match. He handily deals with the initial rush and does a ton of econ damage in his first push. After a number of skirmishes outside of my base, he makes his final push with his Stalkers into my 200 food Muta/Hydra/Ling army. I win that battle and counter with a 250 food push of my own, augmenting my forces with Ultralisks.

I knew you had alot of mutas and hydras, but you were maxed? Oh, I still have a long ways to go. :lol:

Heh, yeah I was. Finally woke up after your penultimate push and realized I had way too many resources piled up and was only at like 150, so I maxed myself out on Mutas. In retrospect I probably would have been better off with Lings or Hydras, but it worked out so whatever.